Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

“Anna?” I said. She pushed her body against me tighter. “Hey, Anna?” She made a muffled sound that might have been anything. “Damn it, Anna!” I got my arms free and grabbed her in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her side.

She didn’t struggle. Her body got very stiff,

and seemed to increase in weight until she was as heavy as me. Then she went limp, and as I held her the light from a streetlight showed a line of tears down her face.

“Anna, for God’s sake—” I started.

“They are saying me I must sex you or you go away,” she said.

“What?”

“They are saying me, big handsome man who does not like boys, this is most rare in Key West and I must not let you go. And I do not want to let you go. So I must sex you.”

“What the—Who said—?”

“And I am thinking only of the soldiers when I am thinking of this, I am not ready yet to sex and they are saying I must be ready, in America is quicker for ready. And with you I want to try again—I must try again—But I can think only of the soldiers—” And she collapsed into wracking, gut-wrenching crying.

It took me a few minutes. First I had to wait for Anna to pull herself together. She was not a person who could be jollied or gentled. The strength I had seen in her carried over to her emotions, which couldn’t be persuaded by anyone or anything. They had to run their course.

When Anna was back in control she told me that her roommates—who had been in this country much longer than she had, more than a year now—had explained to her all about dating in America. They told her that a woman must sex the man or he would think she was a bad person. I guess they watched a lot of soap operas while they made the beds. Or maybe I’d just dated the wrong women.

And so Anna had tried. She had come to like me very much and did not want me to think she was a bad person. She did not want me to stop being with her. So she had tried to sex me. But all she could think was what happened at home when the soldiers came.

We sat there on the front step of her small bungalow and she told me things that didn’t seem possible if you heard them under the moon in Key West, with the small evening breeze pulling at her fine blond hair.

It was a pretty simple story and Anna told it simply. The sobbing stopped and her voice froze over as she told me. There was no emotion in her for this.

She had been raped. Her family had been killed. The soldiers had left her for dead, too. She had lived, buried the bodies, made her way slowly to the West. Come to Key West by a sort of drifting motion that brings so many people down here.

I couldn’t think of a whole lot to say. I kept one arm around her, making small circles on her back with my hand. I don’t think she noticed.

When she finished telling me, Anna sat stiffly, not looking at anything. So did I.

“So,” she said after a while.

“Anna,” I said.

“I like you, Billy, very much. I would like to do love with you. But I am thinking of doing this and I can think only of the soldiers.”

“It takes time, Anna. I understand that.”

“But how are you now feeling about the soldiers?”

“I want to kill them.”

“You do not think me a trash?”

“For God’s sake, Anna.”

She nodded. “Yes. But my friends are saying me, if I say to you what happened you are no longer wanting to be with me. Because I have been so much raped and you will no longer want to sex me.”

I kept an arm around Anna. I didn’t know what else to do. “I’d be happy to sex you,” I said. “But only when you want to.”

She would not look at me. “This is not true, this is just talk. Men have the pressure to build up and they must sex often. I will lose you.”

I hadn’t tried that line since high school and it hadn’t worked then. Maybe I should have gone to high school in Ukraine.

“Listen,” I said, “Men have the pressure build up, yes. But a man can control it. I’ll wait until you’re ready. You won’t lose me.”